How to Steal the World (1968)

Wonderful character development!

Great Film overall

Good concept, poorly executed.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The men from UNCLE are at it again. This time attempting to stop Barry Sullivan and company from wrecking the world.Fans of Irwin Allen TV shows such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost In Space should get blast out of this film. Sutton Roley directed some of the best Irwin Allen TV hours, including Voyage's The Phantom Strikes, and Roley brings his very unusual directing talents to How To Steal The World.In UNCLE, Roley puts the camera under glass tables or above boats at sea. Or up close to the actors. Even without seeing the credits, I always knew when Roley was directing a 1960s TV hour. He actually caused Irwin Allen a head ache or two when he opened up Voyage's submarine Seaview set (which was a no, no) so he could get the camera closer to faces of the crew.Away from the director, How To Steal The World is a fine film and I don't really understand the negative reviews here.

The last of the eight theatrical features produced out of the "Man From U.N.C.L.E" TV series, "How To Steal The World" has some unusually (God) complex villains, some intelligent dialogue ("You pursue a merciful ideal....mercilessly"), and some thought-provoking ideas, but it suffers from a plodding pace, some technical faults in a few of the action scenes, certain not very well-explained parts of the ambitious plot (just how do they plan to make sure that every last person on earth inhales the "docility gas"?), and the sensation that the two leads, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, do not seem to be fully engaged to the proceedings; there is hardly any of their customary byplay. ** out of 4.

How To Steal The World was the eighth and final spin-off from "The Man From UNCLE" spy series. It was compiled from the final episodes of the series, "The Seven Wonders Of The World Affair" (part one: 8/01/1968) and (part two: 15/01/1968). The story began life as a single episode but was stretched to feature length so that producer Norman Felton could release another theatrical movie overseas. As with the others, the TV version was not aired in the countries where the movie was released such as Britain.Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuriyakin link the abduction of various VIP's with a plot to dominate the world. The mastermind behind it is Robert Kingsley (Barry Sullivan) an ex-UNCLE agent who plans to end all evil by launching a docility gas that Dr Kurt Erikson (Albert Paulsen),a top bio-chemist has developed with the help of the abducted VIP's.All in all, How To Steal The World is a disappointment and clearly shows that it was padded out from a one-hour episode to make a feature film. The plot is lacklustre and its absurdities do not carry the same weight here as they did in its predecessors mainly because the tongue-in-cheek chemistry between Vaughn and McCallam, which made the series so popular has faded. Even Barry Sullivan's villain, Robert Kingsley, is a poorly conceived part as he seems like a big softy compared to his predecessors such as Luther Sebastian (Bradford Dillman) in "The Helicopter Spies" (1967). The supporting cast includes a young Leslie Nielsen who offers the best acting as an ex-army general who will go to any lengths to protect Kingsley's scheme even if it means killing people and both he and Kingsley are always colliding over each other's different ways of dealing with saboteurs.

"How to Steal the World" was the last of eight (!) movies MGM culled from "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and released to cinemas outside North America, and in fact it was put together from the final story of the series (the two-part episode "The Seven Wonders Of The World Affair"). Alas, even if you didn't know it was from the last episodes you could tell the end was near - neither Vaughn nor McCallum has his heart in this latest U.N.C.L.E. vs T.H.R.U.S.H. escapade, and indeed no one else (except for Leslie Nielsen) can be bothered to act with conviction. Limply written and directed, and with Jerry Goldsmith conspicuously absent from the credits for his theme, this is a depressing experience all round. (Mind you, so was the fourth season of the show.) Stick with the other seven ersatz movies.